Starting a Kitchen Garden

Last year we moved to a new house, which will be our home for the next 30 years (we’re hopeful)!  It is in a location that we think is just ideal, not far from the beach and with a 96 hectare bushland reserve only a block away.  The block came perfectly landscaped, with lovely screening plants to green in the surrounding fence-line and lovely lawns front and back.  There is a little hedge to separate our front lawn from the neighbours, a hibiscus hedge surrounding the garage and a white and red rose garden in front of our bedroom window.  We are lucky to have bore water to reticulate the garden which will save us so much money over time on water costs.  But the one garden element missing is a vegetable garden!

Growing your own fruit and vegetables has many benefits.  Not only do you benefit from knowing exactly what your crops have been sprayed and fed with, but it’s also excellent exercise to dig, weed, plant and water your garden in the fresh air.  The freshness of the food means that fruit and vegetables retain more essential vitamins and minerals, and they taste much better than those bought at the supermarket that have travelled from hundreds or sometimes thousands of miles away, and/or have been in cold storage for months.

Gardening is mentally therapeutic as well!  In a project conducted by Deakin University (http://www.hphpcentral.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/beyondblue_togreen.pdf) there was much evidence to support that contact with nature affects numerous facets of a person’s physical, mental and social life such as:

• reducing anger, frustration and aggression

• increasing a sense of belonging and acceptance

• a range of other aspects including socialisation, mobility, mental stimulation, touch, physiological benefits, and the fulfilment of basic needs such as love, respect, usefulness, trust, self-worth and nurturing.

Research on the physiological health benefits of gardening has shown that gardening:

• reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease

• reduces HDL cholesterol levels in elderly men

• improves the health of diabetes patients

• reduces risk of gastro-intestinal haemorrhage

With this many benefits to be gained from growing an edible garden how could anyone live without one?   I certainly can’t and so I have selected the perfect location for our vegetable patch, in a 4 x 3m section of the garden that gets plenty of sunshine, is watered by the bore reticulation and is covered with dappled shade from a large monstera plant that has grown as high as the house eves.  It’ll be perfect for protecting crops from the hot summer sun, as the area is also surrounded by the brick walls of the house on two sides.

In Australia it is autumn and so now is the time to plan the winter garden and get planting some winter seedlings.  My daughter and I spent an hour on the weekend making up newspaper pots to fill with potting mix and propagate plants from seeds.  The way to do it is to take several sheets of newspaper and fold them into three along the long edge.  Cut out the strips and then wrap a couple of pieces tightly around a straight sided jar leaving a 5cm overlap at the bottom.  Fold the bottom newspaper across the base of the jar and push down on a hard surface to form the base.  Carefully pull the jar out of the newspaper mould and fold the top inwards to help keep the pot straight.  Then fill the pots with potting or seed-raising mix, and push seeds into the soil.  Water lightly and keep the pots moist until the seedlings sprout.  I don’t expect the plants to be large enough to plant out for a couple of months, which is just as well as I’ll need to get moving to prepare the vege patch site!

Do you find it satisfying to grow your own edible produce?  Have you started planning your winter/spring vegetable garden? I’ve love to hear about it, so write me a post or send me an email at livewelllivesmart@gmail.com .

Budget Blowout

This month we’ve celebrated my daughter Emily’s 4^th birthday and we’ve done it in style – celebrating for an entire week, with her birthday falling on a Wednesday this year.  We began the week of birthday celebrations with a family dinner which was a bit impromptu, taking advantage of a long weekend and the fact that the extended family hadn’t already made plans that Saturday night.  We ended up with 17 people for dinner, with the cousins bringing entree and Aunties contributing salads to the meal, while we provided the BBQ meat and birthday cake (chocolate mud, made from scratch!) for dessert.  Everyone had a great night, especially my daughter who was in her element under the spotlight of all the attention.

Wednesday was Emily’s birthday, and also kindy day, so Tuesday night was spent making nut-free, egg-free, dairy-free cupcakes to share with her classmates (good reviews on that one!).  We held a present opening ceremony when I got home from work on Wednesday – it’s the best feeling when you pick a present that you know is the perfect thing for your child. 

Then Saturday was Emily’s party with her friends.  I had made some enquiries about holding a party at a local indoor playcentre, but the cost of this was $300 for 8 people including Emily.  With Emily having just started kindy over a month ago we thought we’d rather do something where the kindy families could get to know each other better and decided to invite the whole class (20 kids) to a local park with excellent play equipment.  While the venue was free, we still needed to cater for enough food, drink, plates, lolly bags and prizes for the group and there was little change from $300 in the end.  While this amount stretched to over 25 children (including siblings), and around 25 adults it did cap off quite an expensive week!

So, suffice to say, my savings this month have not met my goal but have been roughly halved.  I did set myself a tough target to save a third of my wage, which I moved out of my account on the day that I got paid.  But part of this has slowly crept back in to my regular account.  Still I can be grateful that my savings are heading in a positive direction, if not necessarily at the rate I had intended.

Over the next week then, it’s important for me to keep track of my spending, so that I don’t need to pull in any more of my savings to rescue the budget blowout situation.  I remember one lesson from Cath Armstrong’s book Debt Free Cashed Up and Laughing and that is to shop first at home.  You can be amazed by how much food is stored at home – in the pantry, the fridge and the freezer.  If you add it all up, there is guaranteed to be more than a week’s worth of food accumulated at any one time.  Think of the pasta, the rice and potatoes in the pantry  - there’s the basis for four dinners of the week.  Eggs and vegies make another meal, salad and meat yet another.  Even the flour can be turned into crepes and filled with a chicken based savoury filling for an extravagant panty-based meal. 

So that’s my challenge for this week – to see how long I can get by without having to go shopping.  Getting to the end of this week without having to purchase any more food items would be a terrific achievement and would mean that I don’t have to spend any more before I get my next pay. 

What do you do when your budget is straining towards the end of a pay period?  If you have any money saving or making strategies I’d love to hear them.  Send me a post of drop me an email at livewelllivesmart@gmail.com .

Practicing Gratitude

It’s a tough time for many people at the moment in Australia, with a succession of one company after another declaring that they are downsizing or moving their operations off shore.  Facing the prospect of losing your job and your income, not to mention on a deeper level your identity, sense of security and self-belief is very stressful and depressing.  I am usually an optimistic person, always preferring to see the glass half full and look on the brighter side of life.  But recently I have been experiencing some of the fear that comes from uncertainty about my own long-term job situation and I have sought out ways to put things into perspective in my own mind and find my way back to a happy frame of mind.  One of the ways I’ve done this is to concentrate more intently on practising gratitude.

In Joshua Rosenthal’s article, Gratitude: The Secret to Happiness, he says “Shifting the focus from what you don't have to what you do have can have a profound influence on your moment-to-moment mood and emotional state, and it can have a huge impact on your physical health, as well. In fact, there is a burgeoning field of research -- positive psychology -- devoted to looking at the contributing factors of happiness and well-being.

In a study by scientists at the University of California, Berkerley it was found that people who practice gratitude consistently report of host of benefits:

·         Stronger immune systems and lower blood pressure;

·         Higher levels of positive emotions;

·         More joy, optimism, and happiness;

·         Acting with more generosity and compassion;

·         Feeling less lonely and isolated.

In the past few weeks consciously thinking of what I’m grateful for has helped me immensely.  I’ve always subconsciously been expressing my gratitude -- whenever something good happens, I sent a silent “thank you so much, I appreciate this event, this day, this situation” to the Universe and God particularly if I have been yearning and asking for an event to work out a certain way.  But I never knew the profound impact that practising gratitude regularly can have on my life. 

In her books Simple Abundance and Peace and Plenty, Sarah Bran Breathnach recommends keeping a Gratitude Journal, a “polite daily thank-you note to the Universe.”  She recommends writing down up to 5 things to be grateful for from the day, and acknowledges that some days you could be grateful for simply having reached the end of that day.  By recognising these events, people, situations and feelings and expressing gratitude you realise how lucky you actually are, and feelings of positivity, if not optimism, start to return.

We can all learn to express gratitude regularly, rather than in response to major events taking place in our lives. In this way, we take the time to notice and appreciate what we have, rather than wishing for what we don’t have. Being able to appreciate the small wins and subtle gifts in our ordinary lives is what being this is all about.  Expressing gratitude brings forward in my mind the things are the most important to me, and I realise how little of the material elements of our world feature in these thoughts. 

Gratitude is the basic ingredient to create joy in our lives.  In her book The Gifts of Imperfection Brené Brown talks about how the practice of gratitude can lead to a joyful life.  She says “One of the most profound changes in my life happened when I got my head around the relationship between gratitude and joy. I always thought that joyful people were grateful people. I mean, why wouldn’t they be? They have all of that goodness to be grateful for. But after spending countless hours collecting stories about joy and gratitude, three powerful patterns emerged:

·         Without exception, every person I interviewed who described living a joyful life or who described themselves as joyful, actively practiced gratitude and attributed their joyfulness to their gratitude practice.

·         Both joy and gratitude were described as spiritual practices that were bound to a belief in human interconnectedness and a power greater than us.

·         People were quick to point out the differences between happiness and joy as the difference between a human emotion that’s connected to circumstances and a spiritual way of engaging with the world that’s connected to practicing gratitude.”

I have much in my life to be thankful and grateful for, and I am recognising and acknowledging this on a daily basis.  Do you practice gratitude, and if so has it created more joy and satisfaction in your life?  I’d love to hear about it, so drop me a post or send an email to livewelllivesmart@gmail.com

Natural Housekeeping

This weekend I picked up a brilliant book from our local library called “A Guide to Natural Housekeeping” by Christina Strutt.  It’s more than just about cleaning house – it covers a range of topics from environmentally friendly and homemade cleaning products, to planning and planting a kitchen garden.  She has also written chapters on the well-stocked larder (covering pickles and preserves – my new favourite), the usefulness of herbs and inspired gifts made from vintage items and home grown produce.

Christina writes that “it is possible to keep a clean house and maintain a fertile garden organically, to shop locally and seasonally and to recycle and re-use as much as we possibly can.  This way of life may sometimes be more time consuming but….. I have found that it is more efficient and ultimately much simpler and less stressful.  Add to that the fact that you will save money, the environment and miles travelled, and this can only be a good thing”  So, you can see, it’s my kind of book!

I had previously learned from Shannon Lush, Australia’s “Queen of Clean” (www.shannonlush.com/) that white vinegar and bi-carbonate of soda can replace a mountain of chemical household cleaners.  I am already a convert, using them in my laundry washing (I use ¼ amount of regular wash powder, 2 tablespoons of bi-carb of soda and put one cup of white vinegar in the fabric softener dispenser for each wash) and using vinegar to clean my windows and mirrors (in a spray bottle, then wipe clean with paper towel/chamois).  But from Christina's book I’ve now discovered some more practical uses, which I’ll record here so that I remember to put them to the test:

-       to clean brass, copper and pewter mix one teaspoon of salf and one cup of vinegar, stirring in enough flour to make a paste.  Cover the item and leave for 15 mins then wash off with warm water and polish with a soft dry cloth

-       to rid the kitchen of cooking odours, simmer a solution of vinegar and water in a pan for 5 mins

-       to remove deodorant stains on coloured clothes, rub with a soft cloth dipped in vinegar and wash as usual

-       to deodorise drains, pour two tablespoons of bicarb of soda down the plug hole followed by half a cup of vinegar, leave to bubble for 20 mins then flush through by running the tap for a minute

-       wipe down kitchen surfaces with neat vinegar to deter insects (silver fish, ants etc).  This will also disinfect the surfaces.

-       To clean an deodorize a microwave, fill a bowl with vinegar and boil in the microwave.  This will loosen dried food on the walls, which can then be wiped clean with a soft damp cloth.

-       Sprinkle bicarb of soda into the bottom of a bin to remove unpleasant odours.  After emptying the rubbish, add some water and swill around the bin.  Pour it out and leave to dry, then add more bicarb for next time.

-       To clean silver, soak it in boiling water with bicarb of soda, cream of tartar, salt and a piece of aluminium foil.

Other items recommended to keep in your cleaning cupboard are:

Beeswax polish for nourishing timber and leather
Natural, ready-prepared cleaning fluids (I like the “Earth” brand floor and surface cleaner, and toilet cleaner).
Enamel buckets – preferably vintage.  This appeals to me! I’ll need to look out for them in flea markets and junk shops…. They’ll last a lifetime (and look vintage chic, too).
Jam jars with screw lids – I’ll need to build up a good stock of these!
Old toothbrushes
Rags for cleaning cloths from old clothes, towels, sheets, pillowcases etc
Refillable spray bottles

Christina comments “I have no need for anything more – mine is a small but friendly cleaning-product cupboard.  I lead a small but friendly life!”  I’m on the way to do just that, too!

If you have any tips on eco-friendly cleaning products or recipes that you use I would love to hear about them.  Send me a post or email me at livewelllivesmart@gmail.com .

Home Grown and Homemade

We are so lucky to have some very lovely neighbours who keep chickens.  The chickens lay many more eggs than the family of 4 can keep up with, and we have become the fortunate recipients of the excess eggs.  They are so fresh, and the yolks are such a lovely golden colour we all enjoy them for breakfast on the weekend and cooking during the week.  I really wanted to pay them back for their generosity, but our neighbours won’t take any money.   I had started collecting egg cartons for them as a gesture of thanks, but I’m conscience that it could be taken as a request for more eggs! (the eggs are so welcome, but I’m not going to ask for them!!).  I racked my brain for an idea of how I could repay the favour.

A couple of years ago I had discovered some fresh produce in the market gardens that are still allowed to remain in the North-Eastern suburbs of Perth.  One of my favourite places is a strawberry farm.  At the start of Spring the berries are huge and juicy, and while they are not that much cheaper than those you can get in supermarkets even in bulk (at about $25 for 3kg), they are so much fresher that there is no waste….. which I think is key to getting value for money when it comes to fresh food.  I had frozen some strawberries that I purchased in spring, and decided to turn them into some strawberry jam.  I could finally offer something back to our neighbours made by hand!

I found a recipe for Strawberry and Vanilla jam – perfect, because that sounded yum and I’d never seen this combination in the shops, so I could make something a little different.  The recipe was easy…. 2.5kg of strawberries, 2kg of sugar and a split vanilla bean.  I washed and hulled the berries, dried them, let them sit for 2 hours (stirring every half hour) in the sugar with scraped seeds of the vanilla bean plus the husk itself, then cooked the mixture quickly for 30 mins.  In the meantime I had prepared jars by boiling them to sterilise.  I checked the set of the jam by testing on saucers left in the freezer to cool (run the jam down the cold saucer and see if it stays runny or sets jelly-like), then when ready I removed the vanilla bean husk and bottled up.  I turned the bottles upside down for 2 minutes to seal (it actually work!  I could push down the pop-up bit on the lid and it stayed down). And voilà – my Strawberry with Vanilla jam was ready!

The next day, my girls gleefully took our jam over to the neighbours.  It felt good to be the giver rather than the receiver!  I hope our neighbours enjoy the jam.  I hope we do too, there is so much jam that even the 6 jars I had washed and stored did not contain the batch, and I had to fill some extra containers!!

It is a satisfying feeling to create your own produce – whether that be preserving like this, or growing herbs and vegies and harvesting from our own garden.  At the moment I have rosemary, dill, thyme, basil and parsley (curly and Italian) growing and they add a flavour explosion when added to dishes.  I also have some lettuce growing in a shallow pot.  I’d like to create a vegie garden, but will have to cordon off an area of the garden to do it so that the dogs don’t have access, and also I want to wait for the days to cool, because these over 35 degree days will just wilt young vegie plants.  I have plans to create a raised garden bed as this will allow me to build up a nutrient rich soil and I can locate it in an area that will be watered off the bore-fed reticulation. 

In the meantime, I have discovered a website called www.ripenear.me where I can source local, home grown produce.  The website allows you to search for households in your area that have excess fruit, vegies and herbs.  It’s a terrific idea, and one that ensures that the excess food grown doesn’t go to waste, especially when the owners have exhausted every conceivable recipe for broad beans/rhubarb/tomatoes!  In the UK you can try www.poppito.com.

If you share your home-grown produce with your neighbours, have a barter system going, or have any recipes for preserves made from home grown produce, I would love you to post about them here, or send me an email at livewelllivesmart@gmail.com .

Improving Performance Through Delegating

If there is one skill that assists dramatically in time management, keeping goals front of mind and on track, and maintaining focus on priority activities it is delegation.  While some find it easy, others myself included, can sometimes find it challenging.  I don’t consider myself a ‘control freak’ but admittedly I am comfortable multi-tasking and being accountable for my actions, and occasionally I have thought that people who delegate too often are just lazy!  But I recognise the importance of improving my delegation skills, letting go of tasks that can become someone else’s responsibility, and ensuring my time is spent on doing the most important activity at that particular time.

The way in which tasks are delegated is important for both the person delegating and the person being delegated to. 

It’s important to me that delegation isn’t just a matter of telling someone else what to do.  Through my paid work, I want delegation to be a mutual understanding between myself and person I’m delegating to that I value their contribution and want to work with them as a team to accomplish all that needs to be done on the accounts that I manage.  I know that allowing colleagues to assist sends a clear message that I have faith in them, I value their skills, and I want them to succeed and grow in their careers, too.

KT Bernhagen shared a great tip on the website http://www.themuse.com/advice/6-tips-for-delegating-success .  “Open, clear communication from the get-go is absolutely crucial to ensuring that the projects you delegate will be done well. From the very beginning of the project, be up-front about your expectations, including timelines and deliverables, and give your team members all of the information they need to achieve those goals. It can be helpful to put everything in writing or provide people with a template or guidelines for the project—the more direction you give them, the more likely they’ll come back with what you’re looking for.”

One way to keep the elements of the delegated task on track is to adopt the SMART or SMARTER rule.  At work, my delegated tasks should be:

·                     Specific

·                     Measurable

·                     Agreed

·                     Realistic

·                     Timebound

·                     Ethical

·                     Recorded

On the website www.businessballs.com/delegation.htm Alan Chapman writes:

“The rate and extent of responsibility and freedom delegated to people is a fundamental driver of organisational growth and effectiveness, the growth and well-being of your people, and of your own development and advancement.”

At home it is much less formal, but still just as important that I can delegate chores. I want the delegation of tasks to my children to be learning experiences for them, so that they can develop the skills they need for self-sufficiency – real life skills.

This has been relatively easy for my eldest daughter, who relishes any new responsibility and new tasks (at least before the novelty of it wears off!). This year she has really taken to making her own school lunch, which at 7 years of age is quite impressive.  As she gets older, I realise that I can delegate more to her, which helps her to build the immediate skills of the specific task, but also a sense of accomplishment and responsibility, and earned trust from her parents.  My youngest daughter at 3 is somewhat less independent, but can skilfully find a way out of a task, or con someone in to completing it for her…. Quite the delegator (maybe I can learn from her!!)

Whether at home or paid work, being mindful of others is critical.  I should be grateful for the work others have done and ensure that I show my gratitude.  I should give credit for the work done, particularly if it’s rewarded by customers or stakeholders.

So, my aim is to put delegation into action every day, to assist others in building their own skill set and teach my kids some important life lessons and survival skills along the way.  By doing this, I’ll be improving my own efficiency and ensuring I spend my time getting the most in return for my efforts.  Do you find it easy to delegate tasks?  What strategies do you use to ensure tasks are completed appropriately?  Please send me a post or drop me an email at livewelllivesmart@gmail.com – I’d love to read your suggestions.

Educating Myself on Investment Options

One goal I promised myself I would keep this year was to start saving harder than ever before, to prove to myself that we as a family can live on less.   I’m aiming to save one third of my wage each month, which is quite substantial and will force some considerable adjustments to our budget, but I’m up for the task!

It’s February, which means one month of the year has passed already, so now to plan what to do with the savings I have from January and will continue to grow.  I definitely don’t want them stored in a low interest day-to-day savings account on two fronts:  I don’t want them to be easily accessible and I want to earn a decent return.  I’m happy not to put all my eggs in the one basket, and plan to divvy up the funds across three areas – short term savings in a high interest online account, medium term savings in a term deposit or managed fund and long term savings investing in the stock market.  It’s the latter two that I know little about, so I’ve set about researching some information.

I’ve started my research by using a one-stop investing site www.investsmart.com.au .  It gives clear and easy to understand comparisons of managed funds across various sectors and strategies (ie. Global shares vs Australian shares).  It also provides quick summaries on the highest peforming funds and the most popular funds.  The Barefoot investor, Scott Pape, often talks about the Australian Foundation Investment Company.  Their investments have regularly made returns at solid rates over decades of years.  This is a bit of a hybrid between managed funds and investing in shares, as it is an investment company investing in Australian shares using the pool of multiple investors' cash in the same way as managed funds, but it is listed on the stock exchange so stocks are purchased through brokers in the same way as shares in any public company are purchased.  Looking on their website, www.afi.com.au  there’s heaps of information on historical returns and dividends paid (these are in February and August).  To me, it sounds like an option worth exploring further.

Then there’s investing directly into public companies listed on the stock exchange.  I’m more comfortable to invest in companies I know well, so I’ll limit myself to Australian shares.  There are many options to set up an online share trading account, whether that be through banks or websites such as www.investsmart.com.au and it doesn’t take a lot of time or effort to set one up, particularly if you go through the bank you currently have accounts with, as proof of identity and documentation required is at a minimum.  I have arranged to get an account ready, but haven’t started trading yet.  I feel that I need to put some energy into understanding the market further before taking the plunge …. I need more education.  I want to know what investment strategy would best suit me?  I need to consider such things as high dividend returns vs high unit value growth and how this impacts investments over the long term.  How to look at a company’s balance sheet to determine their risk profile?  Finance experts provide advice on companies to invest in and their potential growth and value, but who do you trust?

The www.asx.com.au website is an excellent place to start researching EVERYTHING about share trading.  There’s an enormous amount of information on potential companies to invest in.  The site allows you to put a “watch list” together of the companies you’d like to keep tabs on, so that you can see these particular companies over a period of time and determine how they are performing and when might be the right time to invest.  There’s an “education” section which includes information for “first-time investors”.   There are tutorials to watch on how the share market works, an online shares course to find out what you need to start trading, investment videos and an investor update newsletter that you can sign up for.  Then there’s an opportunity to play the ASX Share Market Game and learn how to trade in real market conditions without risking real money.  The game goes for just over 4 months, giving participants a chance to test their strategies and learn from others’ strategies.  This sounds ideal for me, so I’ve signed up for the game which starts at the end of February.  It’ll motive me to keep up-to-date with the market and I’ll learn lots along the way.

What investment strategies have you employed?  Do you have a preference for cash, shares, bonds, property funds, managed funds or anything else?  I’d love to hear your thoughts so send me a post or drop me an email at livewelllivesmart@gmail.com